Freak Show
by Evandar
Summary: AU. 'He wishes he could ask her out without coming off as a total creep.' Harry's relationship with his cousin is a strange, fragile thing. Harry/fem!Dudley
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Harry Potter_ and I am making no profit from this story.

**AN:** This was written for Rizaidym because he's the one who put the idea in my head. It's not quite complete, and I'm not sure it ever will be, but it can still stand alone. It's Harry/fem!Dudley, but - for now - very mildly. That'll change if I update it, but...*shrugs* I don't know when or if that would happen.

Freak Show

by Evandar

**I.**

The first time Harry actually thinks of his cousin as a person is in primary school. At home, she's always been Rosie-Posie Princess, Daddy's Little Girl. She's been perfect and spoiled and just so precious – a brat, in Harry's opinion, but he's a freak so what does his opinion matter?

School is different. Rose Dursley is no one's princess here. She's not smart enough for the teachers to adore her. She's blonde and blue-eyed, but overindulgence has made her fat and she's not that pretty to begin with. She's spoiled and mean and cruel, and no matter how much Aunt Petunia likes to dress her up in frills and ribbons and bows, nothing on earth will make her girly.

It's their second week in school when Harry finds her crying on the back steps. She hasn't made the best impression – neither has he – and girls are cruel. They look and they judge and they giggle behind their hands as they huddle in little groups with their dolls. They remind him of Aunt Petunia.

"What do you want?" she asks him as he sits next to her – a safe distance away; Rose has a mean right hook.

"It gets better," he says, "if you keep your head down. Just pretend that you don't exist and they'll ignore you." He doesn't look at her when he speaks. He doesn't want to see her cry. Really cry, not have fake, brattish tantrums. She's crying real tears, like he does in his cupboard sometimes, and it makes his insides squirm.

"What would you know?" she asks. He doesn't say anything. Telling her that her parents are worse than the girls who made her cry would get him punched and – once she'd told – locked in his cupboard without meals for a few days, so he keeps his mouth shut. They sit together in silence.

**II.**

They're seven when Harry finally gives in and helps Rose with her homework in return for her not telling her parents when he does something freakish in school. It's blackmail on her part. Their teacher's hair turned blue when she was telling Harry off, and while the Dursleys have never given either of them an exact definition of what they mean by 'freakishness', Harry knows that this will fall under it. So he agrees to help her. He already keeps his marks lower than hers – he'd be locked up if he didn't – but they both know that he's the smart one.

He's surprised when he actually learns something. Rose isn't as stupid as he thought she was. She just doesn't like reading much, and the school doesn't give them other ways to learn.

**III.**

He was running from Polkiss and his gang when he ended up on the roof, and even Rose couldn't hide that kind of freakish display from the Dursleys. Not when the school calls them directly to let them know that Harry has been caught climbing school buildings. It was the last day of school, too, and there's nothing now to stop them from locking him in his cupboard for the whole of half term.

He's watching a spider make a web when there's a soft thud from outside the door. Rose's voice filters through the thin plasterboard door. "It's like how school is, isn't it. 'Cept when Anna and Catherine and Eleanor call me a freak it's because I'm fat. And 'cause I don't like dolls." Thousands of Barbies have met their doom at Rose's hands, but her parents keep buying them. "Or horses." Privately, Harry thinks Rose would prefer a bike or a skateboard or an air rifle or _anything_ that wasn't pink or doll related.

"I get food at school," he says. It's the only real difference. People seem to hate him no matter where he goes. But school lunches are free so even he's allowed one.

Rose is silent for a moment. He wonders if she's left. Gone to tell on him. But then she speaks up again. "Why do Mum and Dad hate you?"

"I'm a freak."

"Yeah. But how?"

He shrugs, but she can't see it. "Dunno."

It's the nicest conversation he's had with her outside of explaining the times tables, but he's still surprised when she opens the door – it's easy to get into from the outside; just bolted instead of padlocked – and shoves a couple of fish fingers and a few chips, wrapped in a paper tissue, through the crack.

**IV.**

Harry's a wizard, not a freak. Or, rather, his freakishness is because he's a wizard.

He's the Boy Who Lived, the one who saved them from the Dark Lord. His scar – the one feature, other than his eyes, that he's ever actually liked – is the only mark left from an evil curse that should have killed him.

So maybe he's still a freak after all.

**V.**

Rose is different when he comes back from first year. She scowls and yells more and walks with her shoulders slightly hunched. But she sneaks into his room at night and asks him to tell her stories about magic – and he does – and she shares her chocolate with him as she bitches about algebra and the horror that is her school uniform (an orange plaid skirt with a maroon blouse and white knee socks; it suits nobody).

It strikes him, one night, as he chews on a piece of Dairy Milk and explains the rules of Quidditch, that he probably shouldn't be telling her this. She's a Muggle. But, he thinks, she already knows he's a wizard.

(And she's easier to talk to than Hermione.)

**VI.**

He writes to her all through second year. After Dobby's visit, she'd snuck him extra food through the cat-flap in his door, so he figures he might as well. He tells her about the Petrifications and the voices in the walls, Dobby and the Heir of Slytherin.

_Your school sounds like a horror film_ she writes back. _A bad one. And how can snakes be evil? They're just animals._

It comforts him more than he'd like to admit. Rose looks at the Wizarding world in the way that Harry thinks he would prefer to: as an outsider. Ron and Hermione aren't so bad, but they don't understand that he's not Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the boy they've read about. He's just Harry, and one day, Harry knows, that won't be enough.

_Being the Heir of Slytherin is a bit like being at Privet Drive_ he writes back _only with more warding gestures. I can deal with it._

_But why should you?_

**VII.**

Rose takes his Hogsmeade permission slip as soon as he shows it to her and picks up a pen from his desk. "I can forge Dad's signature," she tells him. "So stop whining about it and tell me what the hell this is about."

She tosses him a copy of Hamlet. He reads it that night and then takes her to the park the next day. She starts to understand it when they act it out behind the gazebo.

"I wish we could do drama at school," she says, flopping down on the grass after Act Three.

"I wish we could do English," he replies. "Potions is awful."

"Your school sucks."

He thinks that she may be right. After Snape, Binns, Quirrell and Lockhart, he's beginning to wonder about whether Hagrid's assertion that Hogwarts was the best school of magic is actually correct. He sighs. "Don't have a choice, do I? It's this or nothing. It's the only magic school in Britain."

She rolls onto her side and studies him for a moment. "I can send you copies of my assignments and stuff, if you want," she says slowly. "And then you might be able to take your GCSEs."

She's serious, he realises. He smiles. "Thanks."

**VIII.**

When he finds out about Black – about his traitor godfather – she's the first person he thinks of telling. She's the only person he really wants to tell, but of course, Ron and Hermione were with him and they know as well. They're wide-eyed and horrified, but they still don't quite seem to get it. They've never been woken up by the sound of their mother screaming, and flashes of green light.

His hands shake as he grips his quill and the letter ends up blotched with ink and tears. Ron and Hermione watch him, worried, and they question him. Is he alright? He's not going to do anything rash, is he? Who is he writing to?

_I think I'm beginning to see why your parents didn't want me to come here, Rose. _

**IX.**

"He turned out to be innocent. There's truth potions and everything, but no one bothered to even give him a trial."

Even as he gives her the full story, he can't help but let his gaze drift downwards. Rose has grown up. She's a _girl_ he realises. _Definitely_ a girl. He can feel his cheeks reddening and he looks away. What is _wrong_ with him? She's his cousin!

"That's sick," she says, and for a moment he's wondering if she's talking about him looking at the way her breasts strain against her T-Shirt. He doesn't think she's noticed. He hopes not.

"I know," he says.

**X.**

She'll never be beautiful, but she's managed to combine the best of her parents into something that – with age – is becoming passably pretty. There's an optical illusion of sorts, when she tilts her head to the side and bites her lips in thought, where she comes somewhere close to being lovely. She's not skinny by any means, but puberty has started to shift her weight around into something Harry finds kind of attractive.

He wishes he could ask her out without coming off as a total creep. He studies with her instead. They do their homework together on a picnic table in the park; he borrows dust jackets to hide the moving pictures on his book covers and a fountain pen so that he doesn't have to use a quill in public.

Her hair is fine and slightly wavy, and wisps of it fall out of her ponytail and into her eyes. She brushes it impatiently away, but it always falls back. It's in moments like this, he thinks, as he leans back over his History of Magic essay and tries to focus on goblin rebellions again – quiet moments in the warmth and the sunlight, when peace drapes over them like a blanket – that she could outshine Cho Chang.

He glances up at her again, and this time she catches him looking. She smiles faintly and goes back to her work.

(And when the Weasleys arrive to 'rescue' him, he can't help but resent them for it.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** See first chapter.

**AN:** That whole 'mild' Harry/femme!Dudley thing? Died in a fire. This is now fairly explicit, so I've boosted the rating. Other than that, I hope you like it. There should be at least one more part to this at some point, but - as always - no promises as to when.

* * *

><p><span>Freak Show<span>

by Evandar

Part Two

**XI.**

Ginny Weasley still has a crush on him. She's beautiful and willowy and she blushes whenever he looks in her direction. But she's too thin, and her long red hair reminds him of his mother. She stares and blushes and smiles at him throughout the summer, twisting locks of her hair around her fingers and making it glint like fire. But Harry remembers pale blue eyes and fine blonde hair and the denim cling of jeans on his cousin's hips and doesn't think that Ginny is pretty at all.

The thought crosses his mind, one night when he's listening to Ron's snores that she looks like the wrong relative. If she looked like Rose then he'd have no trouble at all.

**XII.**

His name comes out of the Goblet of Fire and he's thrown into the Tournament without a friend in the world to support him. Ron doesn't believe his innocence; Hermione refuses to believe that the authorities could have made such a mistake; he refuses to turn to Ginny Weasley even though her doe-brown eyes and shy smiles invite it. The letters he gets from Rose are his only comfort and Hedwig gets a workout flying constantly between Hogwarts and Smeltings.

_I don't want you to die, Harry_ she writes when he tells her about the dragon that's waiting for him. _Please don't die._

He traces the smudges her tears have left on the thin stationary paper and thinks that maybe he's not the only freak in the family. Still, he can't lie to her and tell her that he won't.

**XIII.**

He doesn't know how they got a hold of her, but it's Rose that he drags from the Black Lake in February. She looked unreal beneath the water, greenish in the poor light and too still, but she breathes again when he gets her to the surface. She coughs and splutters and clings to him in the water and he clings back. "Rose Rose Rose," he says, like her name is a prayer, and together they swim to the shore.

Rose is a Muggle, so she sees ruins instead of a castle and she grips his arm tight enough to bruise him as Madame Pomfrey drapes warm towels over their shoulders. She's shivering uncontrollably in fear and anger and all he wants to do is hold her close and tell her it's alright. (He doesn't because he can't and she's still got a mean right hook.)

"What the fuck?" she hisses in his ear. "How the fuck did I get here Harry?"

He pushes tendrils of wet hair out of her eyes. "It was the second task. They took what I'd miss the most," he tells her.

Rose Dursley isn't as stupid as people think she is, and he sees her figure it out. A dull flush spreads across her face and down her neck and she looks away from him. "Oh," she says. But she rests her head against his shoulder anyway and the worry that had knotted in his stomach eases away.

He wraps an arm around her waist and rests his hand on the curve of her hip. He smiles when she doesn't punch him for it.

**XIV.**

She sits on his bed and shares a bar of chocolate with him as he tells her about the last task and Cedric and Voldemort. It's dark, but the light that comes from the streetlamp outside his window illuminates her hair and the curve of her cheek. Her fingers catch his towards the end and she doesn't let go even as she makes him finish the story.

(But she's not Hermione. She doesn't need to be told that green light and "_kill the spare" _haunt his nightmares.)

She kisses him when he's done. Her lips are soft and warm and she smells powdery like the 'rose-scented' shower gel that Aunt Petunia insists on buying for her. It's chaste and he can hear her breath hitching as she draws back again, and unspoken excuses flood the air between them. Harry knows that it shouldn't feel as right as it does when he cups her cheek and pulls her closer and when he slips his tongue into her mouth to taste chocolate on hers.

(He'll never kiss anyone else.)

The remains of the chocolate tumble to the floor as they cling to each other, desperate and nervous in equal measure as their lips lock in passionate kisses. She straddles his waist and he slides his hands down her sides to rest on her wide hips just to hold her there.

"We shouldn't do this," she breathes against his mouth between kisses.

"I don't care," he whispers back, and he doesn't – not really – because he's wanted to do this for over a year.

When she leaves, she's grinning and oddly shy, and he kisses her briefly by the door before she slips silently across the landing to her room. He collapses back on his bed and reaches down to wrap his fingers round his cock, muffling his groans with his pillow before he falls asleep.

(He doesn't dream of green light.)

**XV.**

Rose's bedroom is a chaotic tangle of clothes and hair products and computer wires. The walls are baby pink because the Dursleys haven't redecorated since she was a baby and pink is the only colour for a little girl.

The day Dementors come to Little Whinging, she laughs at him when he fumbles with the fastening on her bra. She sits up and unfastens it herself before letting him slide the straps down over her arms and throw it to the side. Her parents are out so there's no one except Harry to hear her soft gasps and moans as he cups her large breasts in his hands and takes one of her nipples into his mouth.

Darkness falls and ice frosts over the window, but they don't notice it – Harry is too busy slipping his fingers between his cousin's thighs for the first time – and the Dementors can't get through the blood wards. A Patronus soars down the street outside but Harry is too distracted by the way Rose arches her back and presses down on his fingers and cries out his name as she comes.

**XVI.**

Harry's summer passes slowly. Long, languid days filled with studying and sly glances and shy smiles. The tension between them is electric, but somehow her parents don't notice it; there are times that Harry thinks that they have to – that they're too obvious, too infatuated – but they never do. They think Harry is too freakish to love, so that makes them blind to the not-casual touches and the lingering looks that heat the summer air.

(Rose has a smile like the Mona Lisa when she's got a secret, and Harry can't resist it. He starts kissing it away from her lips when he can, but that only makes it come back stronger than before.)

They learn to be quiet and to take advantage of the times Uncle Vernon goes to the pub and Aunt Petunia plays bridge with the neighbours. He never leaves hickeys where anyone will see them, but the marks he leaves on her inner thighs and the undersides of her breasts pay testament to a possessive streak he hadn't known he had.

The scratches on his back are a testament to her's.

**XVII.**

A week before he has to return to Hogwarts, he's taken to the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. It's Sirius' childhood home and it looks like the set of a horror film. (Elf heads on the walls, screaming portraits, boggarts in the cupboards and doxies in the curtains – it's a house full of shadows and secrets, and Harry surprises himself by liking it. He has a new appreciation for secrets these days.) He's roped into helping to clean it along with the other 'children' and not allowed to attend the meetings that are held in the kitchen.

There's a tapestry on the wall of the drawing room showing the Black family tree. Sirius' parents were first cousins. For the first time, Harry thinks that maybe he isn't such a freak after all.

**XVIII.**

Umbridge is vile and her presence will crumble Hogwarts from within. He ignores her snide comments and accusations, her pitiful lessons and Hermione's pleas to start an illegal Defence club in favour of writing to his girlfriend (cousin).

Smeltings is making Rose take Latin to GCSE, and he helps her with the translations.

_When you leave school_ she writes _what do you want to do?_

_See the world_ he replies. _Be anywhere but here._

_Take me with you?_

_Of course._

He can't imagine leaving her behind when he leaves for good. (There will never be anyone else and he knows it.) So in between discussions of failing education systems and deponent verbs, they build castles in the air. Charity work in Cambodian orphanages, walking hand in hand on the Great Wall of China, riding elephants and rickshaws in India and Sri Lanka, and swimming in lagoons in Thailand.

Once they leave, there will be no need to hide anymore. They can be together properly and no one needs to know that their mothers were sisters. It will be paradise.

**XIX.**

He dreams of Mr Weasley being bitten by a snake and saves the man's life. He's taken to Grimmauld Place early for Christmas, and sits in the kitchen with Sirius and the damp-eyed Weasleys all night waiting for news.

He thinks of Rose's latest letter and the possibility of turtle conservation as Ginny watches him hopefully. She's curled against one of the twins, but she'd move if he asked it of her. He doesn't. She's nice enough, but her crush borders on creepy and there's no real substance to her. She may as well be as intangible as his mother's ghost because that's all she'll ever be, though he'll never say it out loud.

**XX.**

"_Legillimens."_

He learns to hate that incantation, and hate Snape even more than he already did. Dumbledore had insisted on him learning Occlumency, but it soon turned out to be an excuse for Snape to torture him. Snape wants to humiliate him rather than help him (hasn't it always been that way?) and he looks for the most painful memories he can.

"_Legilimens."_

He watches Cedric crumple under green light hundreds of times, sees Rose tied to a column underwater, watches Quirrell turn to ash and a Basilisk rear over him. Again and again and again. He sees Voldemort rise and hears Tom Riddle's whispers (_"We're so alike, you know."_) and he sees the way Ginny Weasley watches him like he's prey.

"_Legilimens."_

The lessons devolve into a screaming match that leaves Harry without a teacher long before Snape can find the things Harry really wants to keep hidden. He doesn't see Rose and the way her lips curve into knowing smiles and her breasts spill over Harry's cupped hands because he's only looked for things that had hurt him. He doesn't hear her laugh or read her letters or taste chocolate on her tongue because even though he knows he shouldn't love her, he can never bring himself to regret it.

Harry knows that he's had a narrow escape, so he checks out a book on Occlumency from the library and practises it alone before he goes to bed every night. He builds his mindscape in the shape of the gazebo he and Rose once performed Hamlet in and hides his memories in spider webs and cracks in the wooden frame. It works better than Snape's lessons ever did, and his dreams of the corridor vanish, leaving him with fantasies of warmth and sunlight, soft lips and the powder-smell of fake roses.


End file.
